Let me get this straight: a backwoods hick on a show about backwoods hicks said an utterly backwoods hick thing when questioned about something backwood hicks are notoriously backwoods hick-ish about? WELL I NEVER.
Fred Clark, who you should all be reading instead of my bullshit drivel, pretty much owns this one, so I’ll just link to him and have done with it. Short version: the usual suspects are up in arms saying that Mr. Chia Beard is being persecuted for his Christian beliefs, since apparently homophobia is the indispensable linchpin of evangelical Christianity in the Year Of Our Lord 2013. Less observed is the fact that the same crowd, fifty years ago, was arguing that striking down racial segregation was a similar imposition upon their Christian beliefs, which they’re obviously falling about themselves to deny now…but since Chia Beard was downright Stephen-Foster-Swanee-River about black folks, it’s disingenuous to suggest that problem’s gone by the boards either.
To me, personally, the fact that one old white dude is horrible about those different from him is about as shocking as downing nine shots of tequila and finding that you’re walking like one of those blow-up things in front of a gas station. You knew damn well what you were getting when you gave a TV show to a superannuated white Southerner, and it wasn’t going to be fucking Glee. To be honest, it’s of a piece with Honey Boo Boo or whatever: I don’t know whether I’m more depressed and offended at the prospect of blue-state folk tuning in for some sort of reverse minstrel show “look at those dumb rednecks,” or the prospect of red-state folks tuning in to say “look, we’re on TV and these people are the apotheosis of our culture and heritage!”
But it puts eyeballs on the screens one way or another, until now – I can only assume that enough of the viewership of A&E generally is the sort of folk who will be put off by homophobia, such that allowing Chia Beard to remain on TV is a greater hit for their brand than taking him off and outraging his amen corner in the Confederacy and thereabouts. Hollywood has an agenda, all right, and it’s the same as my alma mater’s benefactor: GET MONEY. Be assured that they will find someway to finesse a non-apologizing-apology and carry on as if nothing happened, should that be the quickest way to keep printing money off the eccentricities of duck-call manufacturers.
Ah well. Add support for Duck Dynasty’s stars and their products and their beliefs to the list of new-age Southern conservative religious shibboleths, along with buying all your picture frames at Hobby Lobby and gorging yourself on Chick-Fil-A and, well, whatever Sarah Palin does to make money these days. It seems like the best thing you can to do make a profit down South is say something horrible about gay people or contraception or otherwise create an opening to plead “religious persecution” and the holy-roller faithful will fall about themselves to support you. Cynical and awful to be sure, but it’s as good a hustle as anything else out there these days…which only goes to show, I suppose, that the doctrine of “GET MONEY” extends far beyond Cornelius Vanderbilt and the heirs of his body.